Journeys of a quilter in art, dyeing, and handquilting.

Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together

At this year’s Road to California quilt show, Margaret and I saw a quilt that perked our interest, and we brought back inspiration to our Out of the Box quilt group. The loose idea was making a quilt with independent blocks that would be connected in a temporary way, so the blocks could move, shift, and rotate direction and location.

We had our first meet-up to discuss the project and how it might come together. We made a few decisions like: we would all make two blocks, they would all be mostly abstract with circles and rectangles, and that we would all be restricted to using the same fabrics. We all brought various fabrics that we could contribute to the project, and we spent the hour pairing and selecting and coming up with a color scheme.

At our second meeting, we brought sketches, patterns, and some roughly assembled blocks, to discuss the direction designs were going and to get inspiration from each other. There was such a range of patterns! The creativity in the room was contagious. A couple additional decisions that emerged were incorporating triangles (in addition to circles and rectangles) and having multiple layers making the designs more interesting and complex.

At our third meeting, we brought our full size blocks together to share and compare. At this point, each of us had only pinned, fused or glued, with the thought that if something needed changing it could … But it didn’t! All the blocks looked absolutely vibrant together. Each was unique, but all worked together as a whole. We all went home to quilt and bind our blocks to finish them up.

At our fourth meeting, we came together with our finished blocks, and finalized how they were going to be hung and tested how they moved and worked together on the finished quilt. We had smiles on our faces and there was lots of joy in the room as we rearranged and hung blocks. After each adjustment, we stood back to admire the design. The quilt really worked! I’ll share more about the blocks I made, and how we secured the blocks together and how they move. Our quilt, “Puzzlement,” will be shown at our guild show this coming Memorial Day weekend! You can catch the show at the Methodist Church in Bishop on Fowler Street on Saturday May 28 – Sunday May 29.